WASHINGTON – The Obama administration launched a criminal investigation Monday into harsh questioning of detainees during President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, revealing CIA interrogators' threats to kill one suspect's children and to force another to watch his mother sexually assaulted.
At the same time, President Barack Obama ordered changes in future interrogations, bringing in other agencies besides the CIA under the direction of the FBI and supervised by his own national security adviser. The administration pledged questioning would be controlled by the Army Field Manual, with strict rules on tactics, and said the White House would keep its hands off the professional investigators doing the work.
Despite the announcement of the criminal probe, several Obama spokesmen declared anew — as the president has repeatedly — that on the subject of detainee interrogation he "wants to look forward, not back" at Bush tactics. They took pains to say decisions on any prosecutions would be up to Attorney General Eric Holder, not the White House.
Attorney General Holder said he had chosen a veteran prosecutor to determine whether any CIA officers or contractors should face criminal charges for crossing the line on rough but permissible tactics.
Obama White House v. CIA; Panetta Threatened to Quit
A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.
Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.
"You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.
Kliphnote: This is the same Eric Holder that said: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,"
Can you name one country in Europe or Asia that has a black Prime Minster or president. The US has many black leaders.
- This is the same Eric Holder that had Bill Clinton pardon Marc Rich. Holder like most, if not all of Obama's people are far left.
- Holder's former law firm, pro bono work:Former and/or continued representation of fifteen Yemenis, one Pakistani, and one Algerian being held at Guantanamo Bay, and have obtained favorable rulings that detainees have rights under the Fifth Amendment and the Geneva Conventions.[15] The court ruled in March 2005 that the government could not transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to foreign custody without first giving the prisoners a chance to challenge the move in court.
- Supporting the District of Columbia in District of Columbia v. Heller which argues that the District's ban on the possession of handguns and its storage provisions for other firearms in the home is not implicated by the Second Amendment.[16]
- Holder was also involved in Clinton's decision to reduce the criminal sentences of 16 members of the Boricua Popular Army, an organization that has been categorized by the FBI as a terrorist organization.
- Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general will not sit well with advocates of Second Amendment rights — Holder has consistently championed stronger gun-control measures. NRA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Monday released a detainee from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to his home in Afghanistan, the latest departure from the controversial prison which is set to close in five months.
Mohammed Jawad was accused of throwing a grenade that injured two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter in Kabul in 2002. Jawad, one of the youngest prisoners held at the facility, was now with his family in Kabul, according to his lawyer Air Force Major David Frakt.
ACLU Says Government Used False Confessions
By Del Quentin Wilber
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation.
KN: The ACLU defends the enemy. Just for a heads up....they are not citizens of the USA. They have NO rights under OUR consittution. I know some of you on the left want to give them the same rights as citizens of the USA. They are not!
Between Obama and Holder and the ACLU we are becoming a weaker nation.
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